Include Hyperlinks In Project Search

I think it would be a great idea to implement the Project Search function to include hyperlinks in the project search. For example, if I hyperlink a title and then try to search it up by the link, I cannot find it (the search only applies to text and the embedded link does not pop up).

This is already possible.
Type a title, e.g. Houses in Sandton.
Then highlight the title and press Ctrl+Shift+L and paste the link in the popup.
You’re able to search the title.

I meant to search for the hyperlink. Like if the title’s hyperlink is houses.com, I would like to search the project for houses.com and show me the title (so all houses.com and titles that have hyperlink houses.com pop up). I think there is an option for search by formatting but dont know if it can search more advanced scenarios.

I might want this since I want to see all titles that have the hyperlink or I might have forgotten the title but remember the link. It also isnt easy to see all my hyperlinks other than hovering over the title (not very efficient if you have a lot of hyperlinks in your project).

Alright, I wouldn’t work that way as there are ways to categorise research documents and attach them as Project Bookmark and Document Bookmarks which is an overall more efficient way of working.

That aside, there is a way to search for sequential links, though it won’t list search results (documents) in the Binder, only take you from one link (based on a search criteria) to the next – Find by Formatting.

image

You get this popup in which you can either leave the Containing Text blank, if you don’t know what you’re looking for, or populate the cell, where you do.

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The format finder tool unfortunately only searches link text, not URLs, so that will only help as a more targeted way of finding linked text.

To search specifically for URLs we would have to index those, or perhaps add a field to this search tool (which would avoid having to modify the project format). So that remains in the feature request category.


Otherwise, this is the sort of thing that writing with Markdown makes simple. I keep a section called “Links” at the bottom of the Draft that lists all the URLs I use, like so:

[some title]: https://www.literatureandlatte.com/

So if I want to see all of the places where that is used, I can run a project search for [some title]. I drop this section into Project Bookmarks so the list is always easy to access from wherever else I may be working.

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If and when the change is done, consider including a replace capability too. That would enable a user to change the computer’s username in a URL string, in circumstances where a user activates a new machine with a different username, finding their Scrivener external links no longer work because of the name change. Another use-cases would be when restructuring external folders.

Yes, I can do it relatively quickly and in one go with a third-party URL editor. But it would be a nice to have in Scrivener, too.

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